Shalo P is a SF based audio-visual artist who recently exhibited a selection of 14 drawings at Ever Gold Gallery coinciding with the recent release of his self-published “LOVE IS SUCH A DANGEROUS GAME”. The zine, containing work created in a two year period chronicles memories, longing and catastrophic situations in post-modern copy/past collage fashion. They're meticulously wild drawings and really deranged ones at that. The zine comes in two limited versions and are available at the Ever Gold as long as supplies last. It's an absolute gem, so make sure you get yourself a copy. It’s probably the best $8 I’ve ever invested. -Alex Braubach

AMB: I’ve known you since our school days at SFAI and had plenty of opportunities to see your work evolve in the past years. It’s really interesting to see how you have developed from "The Tormentors" paintings you exhibited at Meridian Gallery years ago to what your up to with your video-based performances at New Langton and elsewhere. Your current show at the Ever Gold is an exhibit of drawings. It’s like you’ve come full circle with “Love Is Such A Dangerous Game”. Please describe your current work, the drawings, and how they relate to your previous work.

SP: The work is a barrage of symbols and signs. It’s dense stuff that also seems fit to just be “in the moment”, not only as some mutilation of the bizarre nature of things but also embracing the ways of seeing to varying degrees. You know, as drawings, comics strip and other visual forms. My current works are like celebrations to living at the start of a very weird age.

My conceptual framework hurtles into these different directions and they always seem organic and mine. I’m producing floorshows and farewell concerts with the FRIENDSHIP FRIENDS FOREVER (rainbow band), making videos under the TELEVISION FOR GHOSTS / 2084 FLOORSHOW umbrella, and making images that relay the totemic themes behind all the other work. I shuffle around in formats but the big difference is how close they are to me, personally.

Before I moved to SF I was just a writer, and words just made so much sense to me. Then they seemed phony, manipulative and limited in a world with hypertext in it, a world with so much goddamn subtext to what was lurking under in it’s big storm of changes, in its unconscious birthing of memes. Words were meaningless in the face of the connections between them, in the changing face of how books were produced, in the questions concerning the changes in information retrieval itself. This was big to me - the new ways of experiencing “stuff”, from how we communicated these changes to the part that images play with culture and memory. So I went from writing dialogues to making data maps.

Then I got into imagery again, especially the Medusa, the representation of the incomprehensible. That’s what got me into The Tormentors – relationships - the walls between things breaking down. It was car crashes. Have you ever seen one? It's like that Raymond Carver story "Popular Mechanics", it's a raw moment of chance and horrible corrupted beauty. Things change irrevocably. Well, the drawings... They're my landscape of these feelings - the innate vile beauty of car crashes, the taste of sweat, the medusa's gaze, sexual fantasies, self representation, time and memory - that whole gag. What's the personal side of a good sinner?

AMB: Freddy Krueger.

SP: Hey man, are you going put some cool hyperlinks?

AMB: I can try. I don’t know.

SP: It’ll make it all so much clearer.

AMB: Well, maybe just that last paragraph.

SP: Cool.

AMB: Looking at your zine it becomes very clear that you are as much a storyteller as you are an artist. One of the most distinct characteristics of your drawings are the layers of narratives spreading out on the picture planes like colliding comic strips. There are also so many pop culture references that it's familiar at the same time. Yet, they appear constantly mashed up with violent faces and contorted bodies. Describe some of the motifs in your work. I’d also be curious if you could elaborate on the narrative that runs throughout “L.I.S.A.D.G”

SP: I'm really into stories and how things unfold. Stories involve us with the act of perception as things reveal themselves. The recurring motifs are partly based on the patterns of actions between personal experiences and their various guises or surrogates. To construct a visceral realness of emotions while interlacing them into my specific sort of narrative structure is part of the game. The overall narrative is embedded in its overlap and resurgences in the time frame. That’s my storytelling method. I take things quite literally and way too seriously but it’s fun to play because I also take fun seriously too. The characters usually change shape, destroy themselves, become dissimilar, entwine or explode. The layering comes from the ways I interpret them in their locked position on the plane. They're trapped, yet receding into some obscure chapter, blending fragments from other drawings while in violent stasis. I really care about time and how we remember things, how the past changes when we look at it and how the future does likewise. I'm the type that lives “in the moment”, most don't know how trapped you can feel following your own impetuous brash arrogant nature to its honest conclusion. You get thrown to the wolves of life and it's glorious. Can you put that in parentheses? (I like parentheses)

AMB: ok

SP: Can you write this in parentheses? (SP motions to AB, ruffles his hair, pushes the beer can off the table and kicks it into the wastebasket)

AMB: You missed.

SP: Yeah, but if the parenthesis says otherwise, who cares?

AMB: Your drawings also remind me a lot of dioramas or play-stages. You used to write plays and I remember your early video-based performances with Johnny Rogers being very theatrical, using multiple props and costumes and always seemed to slip from one personality to another.
How much is the picture plane a performance space to you? Do you feel you are acting out certain situations on a 2 dimensional plane?

SP: Yeah, those were so fun! Good ole’ Johnny Rogers... He's a goddamn saint and I love him. Those performances were thrills because they were challenges. And also because the whole thing about being pupil-less Sonny and Cher stepping out a magic white door of light from the basement of black hotel sounded like a blast. Those performances were manic. It’s from stage fright. It’s the same case in the drawings. I’m going to make something coherent and cohesive to the whole, enriching it with another fragment while kicking myself if I’ve put too much of myself into it. I went as far as I could go with those shows for a bit, even singing the original 2084 Floorshow finale nude. Nowadays, I'd rather just throw smoke bombs into crowds while carrying an amp and a mike trying to sing Elton John's "Love Lies Bleeding" or the Bowie cover of "Sorrow" from Pin Ups.
I want to capture true spiritual moments, or those cathartic moments you get from “making” that comes off in the work - like Goya's Caprichos. I value raw honesty.

AMB: Do you think of yourself as shy?

SP: Yep. I think of myself as a shy person.

AMB: You stated in a prior interview, that you had a phase when you read a lot of Last Gasp comics. I can see some Robert Crumb in your work. I also see some Art Spiegelman and definitely Matt Groening. Name some other artists, entertainers or storytellers that influence your art.

SP: Oh man, Last Gasp! I love that stuff. I met Ron Turner once. He thought I was on speed or something because I was nervous and sweaty. I was dragged to see him and clammed shut. While we talk about Last Gasp, I also mean the array of publishers and things that inspire me from that interconnected family of counter-culture. I mean… Rip Off Press, Moscoso, Skull Comics, Skip Williamson and the really obscure stuff too. I do a lot of research. Getting into that really opened possibilities. Every time I see bikers now I want to see them rumble. Luckily, I’m surrounded by so many interesting people, Peter Hurley, Mark Mulroney, Cortney Cassidy, Alex Heilbron, Andy Burkholder... I could talk about shit that blows my mind for hours. I’ll leave a list of “awesome” at the end.

AMB: What inspired the title: “Love Is Such A Dangerous Game”?

SP: The name came from the days of the Casserole Club, a fun drawing club I used to attend. One day I was just sick to my stomach. Tears were welling up inside me and I felt like stabbing myself when this pretty song came up and I thought "aww shucks". That was it. I used to be troubled. Now I'm just troubled squared.

AMB: Help me out with this one. In your artist statement for the show you stated “Who could have thought that one could learn so much about neurotic desire by seeing Bart Simpson wink at you while showing you his asshole?” Could you be a little more specific?

SP: It actually comes from remembering that that was me: Bart Simpson looking provocatively over my shoulder nude at a party. The act of looking deep and remembering who you are in separate phases: It feels heavy. Your self-image exists through the bits you leave around in people's unreliable memories.

AMB: What are you excited about these days?

SP: I'm super excited every day - all the time. But I’m also watching. Did you ever read Alan Moore’s Watchmen? There’s a scene near the end where Ozymandias stares at television monitors and tries to draw out the patterns of a dominant worldview emerging from the chaos of a thousand TV screens. It’s interesting... I'm excited what going on in the sound scenes. I’m excited by where videos are going. This age has got something real different than any of the rest of them. Who knows what’s in its sleeve? It isn't just glitter and smoke, man.

AMB: What kind of projects do you have in line for the future?

SP: I’m currently producing tracks for the new FRIENDSHIP FRIENDS FOREVER (rainbow club) LP off Queens Nails Records later this year. I’m also forming an Optronica label called THE WALL OF FIRE with musicians Shimomitsu and Softserve. I’m really amped about Alternative Digital Domains, a really rad collaborative effort between Other Cinema's Craig Baldwin and Cyrus Tabar (Yoshi Omori). The idea behind it is awesome. A festival you can attend and take home. I'm also super excited about zine fest later this year.

AMB: I remember you telling me how growing up in Miami involved a lot of crocodiles. What should a Californian know about crocs?

SP: Alligators. Alligators. Alligators everywhere. Alligators pulling you under the floorboards and through the window. Dragging your ass to hell. Dragging your ass to hell and whistling.

AMB: If you had a superpower - what would it be?

SP: No way, man... I may as well get something… like laser eyes. You give me shit, motherfucker, and I laser your ass. I'd get the sex perverts first, then the fornicators and sodomites, then the republicans, God and all of space. Wait! I want the power to be good and beautiful and love true (and every now and then warp reality when its stupid ass starts acting backwards).
AB: Isn't that what artists do?
SP: If they do it right.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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